Tuesday, January 10, 2017

Starting position : Britain's decision to leave the EU has made an early Scottish independence referendum very likely, with the most probable dates being 2018 or 2019. Almost no-one is seriously talking about the possibility of a referendum in 2017.

First move : You'd really like a poll showing that Nicola Sturgeon is under pressure to drop the idea of a referendum, so you get on the blower to BMG.

Second move : You start to worry that you might not get the result you're looking for by honest means, so instead of simply asking the public whether they want a referendum, you ask a ludicrously narrow question about whether they want a referendum in 2017 - which everyone knows is not a realistic possibility anyway.

Third move : You get your hollow 'anti-referendum majority', and run a story about how it's a blow for Nicola Sturgeon that the public don't want her to do something she was never planning to do anyway.

Fourth move : You try to retain your composure as a bemused Nicola Sturgeon points out that the poll result is an irrelevance because, as everyone knows, she never had any intention of calling a referendum in 2017.

Fifth move : You run a hysterical headline pretending that Nicola Sturgeon's statement of the bleedin' obvious is a climbdown caused by the result of your own poll and the extreme pressure it put on her.

Sixth move : You try very, very hard to maintain that innocent look on your face.

Its Trinity Mirror & Express Newspapers that are looking at a merger, they thought about it a couple of years back. Mental Siobhan would fit in well at Trinity Mirror given their duplicitous past (both of them).

I don't really see this as a problem. If Sturgeon had backed down because of poll - so what. it is far too early to get people riled up about indy with a vote a couple of years away. this takes the air out of everything & in particular the Tory\Lab demands to take indyref2 off the table...it is for 2017 & if UK Gov agrees that Scotland can remain in the single market for the period of Brexit. So to my mind this is good....also reverse psychology if the hated SNP don't want another indyref are indyrefs good? Ought to confuse the unionists.

The independence movement relies on momentum. Sturgeon announcing that there will definitely be no referendum in the next year slams the brakes on pretty hard. A year is a long time out of someone's life and some will certainly lose interest - or blow their top - now that the dream has effectively been suspended.

But now you've succeeded in whipping people up into a frenzy and they want their indy preferably yesterday. It pains them to think they may have to wait any length of time and the idea that long term the union will prevail just simply does not compute. Passion, once stirred, cannot simply be switched on and off.

But she can't announce one in 2017 either. It takes years to get all this crap organised. And if somehow she managed to fast track it, it would need to be announced for........whenever the final brexit deal has been made public! Seeing as trade negotiations tend to go to the wire and even beyond it, that could be anything from Spring 2019 until well into the next decade.

A more careful build up to 2018 or 2019 is much more likely to yield the positive result that we desire. During the IndyRef we learnt patience during the long campaign and it paid off as the YES vote continued to rise until the unscrupulous VOW caused it to peak. IndyRefNew need not be rushed, except that we need to call it whist we can still be sure of having an Indy majority at Holyrood.

And that majority may well vanish in just over 4 years - with the intervening time being dominated by the complexities of brexit as well as the issues raised during the 2014 campaign (public finances and currency), which haven't gone away or been adequately answered by the SNP. And I think the SNP's nightmare scenario is winning in 2021 but with no majority and no pro indy majority either. They will still be the Scottish government for the ensuing 5 years but facing decay in office and a further deterioration at the next election. The promise of a generational referendum may well hold up, given those circumstances.

Fine. If UK flourishes on Brexit I will go back to eating my cereal. If the US flourishes on Trump, I'll eat sand.But for now, it is not my working assumption, so until proven otherwise, I support Indy2.

BoJo claiming that the UK will be well on the way to being the 51st state of the US of A by the end of the year (special trade deal).This would seem to indicate that the intention is to leave the EU without any significant trade deal being in place....or is it just a bluff.A big gamble when dealing with The Trump who can U-turn faster than a Scottish Tory and would leave Westminster up the proverbial creek.However,should this happen then the 2 year negotiation period when Scotland could be considered for EU membership might be reduced to something considerably less.If I were May,in order to hang onto Scotland,this is what I would do.

The Nat sis are shitin their pants by not going for a referendum. If the Uk is out of the EU by March 2019 and the Nat sis have not called or won a referendum then Scotland is well and truly still in the Union. The Nat sis need to call a referendum this year if they wish to leave the Union and get on with negotiating their way into the EU.

Post actual official bona fide brexit, should Scotland still be in the UK, then I would say the game is up. So that gives Strugglin a time window of 1/1/18 until 1/4/19 to hold an indyref. But she can't really hold it the day before brexit proper - as Scotland needs 18 months to leave the UK. So the referendum should really be held 18 months prior to 1/4/19. That's this year. But she's ruled it out for this year. So what is the time window exactly? It would seem there isn't one.

Nonsense. If it is clear that Scotland will leave the UK before Brexit becomes reality, transitional arrangements will rapidly be put in place to maintain its continued presence in the EU. And it may not need 18 months. Remember the gunshot divorce of Czechia and Slovakia?

In whose interest will it be in Europe to keep Scotland in the EU? They would need to vote unanimously to extend the brexit deadline beyond Spring '19. Spain wont go along with it and I suspect the British government wouldn't be too happy about it either if a trade deal is in place and ready to be implemented. Scotland would have to brexit with the rest of the UK, become formally independent, and then reapply to join the EU as a new member. Our deficit would disqualify us and, again, even if we could do something about that, we'd need the approval of all 27 member states - including Spain.

As for a quickie divorce, I don't believe it's possible. It has taken the Scottish and British governments years to implement things that are a fraction the complexity of Scottish independence. The UK also doesn't compare reasonably with the former Czechoslovakia - like comparing a Porsche and a Lada. One is an advanced economy, the other a poor region of formerly communist eastern Europe.

The Nat sis do not have a plan unlike the UK whose plan is to leave the corrupt EU.The Nat sis are running out of time. Call the referendum now ya cowards. Knickerless is just trying to keep her job and personal interests. The good live has made her go hame tae think again. The Nat si sheep followers need prodded into sense. Get rid of her.

I speak as an individual Unionist. Do not listen to all those other varieties of Unionist go for a referendum shitebag.I note Tasmina has apparantly squared up her tax. Thought she was Labour,Lib or Blue Tory at first turns out Yellow Tory.

Firstly, while we could easily win again, we shouldn't HAVE to. We won already. They don't replay the champions league final because the captain of the losing team is a bit miffed. If they did, it would be a scandal. But football doesn't actually matter - our democracy does.

Secondly, another ref will harm the economy, public services, social harmony. The country needs it like a hole in the head.

A yes vote would have ejected Scotland from the EU - and the European argument was just one of many deployed by the NO campaign - and most of those arguments are still valid today (currency, public finances).

We kept Russia supplied with food and weapons during WW2 as they fought the nazis. The Normandy invasion wouldn't have been possible had Britain been defeated. We also sent many of our top scientists to help with the Manhattan Project.

Why do you denigrate your own country at every turn? Impoverished circumstances? Go and live in Africa and then whinge about poverty.

Indyref2 is coming, either in 2018 or, if Theresa May fails to press the article 50 button by May 2017 by even 4 weeks, then it could be in April 2019. My money is on September 2018.

We need to win indyref2, no doubt about it, but then 18 months of independence negotiations with Westminster will follow, shortly after which there will be the first independent Holyrood election. It will be imperative that the unionists are locked out of government. A unionist coalition Holyrood government would seek to over turn the independence negotiations and perhaps even hold indyref3. We would effectively find ourselves in the same situation as the unionists did after indyref1. A nationalist majority is an absolute neccessity.

During the 5 years of the first independent Holyrood session, the benefits of independence will start to be seen by the people. I do not believe the unionist mantra that we are too poor, based on westminster figures which attributes £3.5 bn in revenue from the whisky industry to England. Scotland is a very wealthy country and when this becomes known, I doubt the unionists will be available for comment, indeed I believe the unionist parties will accept the situation and rebrand themselves. At which point we can rest assured that the union will be over for good

Things have changed since indyref1, the economics of an independent scotland will be fought over during the brexit negotiations and the likely damage to the UK economy that will bring. I also think the option of a GBP currency union will be dropped in favour of a scottish currency for the same reasons. However the issue of the EU will be the most important discussion point, mainly because it is the principal reason for holding indyref2. It might be an idea to point out here that 15% of No voters have moved to Yes since Indyref1 but at the same time 15% of Yes voters have moved to No leaving support or yes static at about 45%. The good news though is this shows that not all the voters are entrenched in their views, we simply need to convince the yes2no voters to back Yes in indyref2. Our position regarding the EU will be critical in doing this.

The 2 main issues during the Euref were the free movement of people and the free movement of goods. The people who voted leave knew they were voting to take back control of their borders, this is something which is under the control of westminster, they can do this now, today, it requires no negotiations with anyone. However, the people who voted leave did not know what trading arrangments they were voting for, indeed they still dont. What trade deal the UK will have with the EU will be subject to negotiations and no one knows for certain what the results will be. Not even the Leave politicians who promised and assured the voters that the UK would get a good deal.

Recently, Andrew Neil showed a clip of various Remain politicians (sturgeon, cameron, davidson etc) saying that a leave vote means leaving the single market. This was in response to The Leavers, like Boris Johnston, claiming we wouldnt, however, Andrew Neil ”forgot” to include Boris’s comments in the clip and then proceeded to claim the voters knew what they were voting or because they had been told by the remainers !!! Disengenious in the extreme but par for the course for the BBC.

We need to be wary of getting caught in the same trap, we cannot state with complete confidence what an independent Scotland’s position in the EU will be, after indyref2, if it is known in advance that its position will be subject to subsequent negotiations. The present position seems to be for Scotland to salvage what it can from the wreckage of the UK EU membership. This will be a unique and bespoke deal for Scotland, unlike any other EU country, crafted from the remains of what was an already bespoke deal that the UK had. Unfortunately we know already that the EU will not concede to an independent scotland, all of the opt outs and the rebate the UK presently has. The 62% who voted remain, gave us the mandate to negotiate a status quo for Scotland, but that isnt on offer, the 62% did not vote for greater integration into the EU or indeed a different settlement. Nicola Sturgeon has no mandate to do that. It should be noted that any agreement, that an independent Scotland negotiates with the EU, will need to be ratified by all 27 eu members.To this end, I propose that for indyref2, we put forward a “holding pen” solution of EFTA/EEA ”Norway” type membership. The terms of this membership do not need to be negotiated, it isnt a bespoke deal, It is a known format shared by 3 countries already, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein. (4 including the Swiss who are members of EFTA only). It would require a simple yes or no from the 4 EFTA countries and the 27 EU members, something which we might even get during the indyref2 campaign. No grey areas, no promises about the final results of Scottish EU negotiations that cant known or certain or be kept

Why this option?

It was put forward as a UK option by many of those in the leave campaign during the Euref. As such it will appeal to many Yes/leave voters since Scotland would no longer be a member of the EU

It would also appeal to many No/leave voters such as the fishermen, under an EFTA/EEA arrangement, Scotland could cut a deal with Norway, excluding all EU fishing fleets and those in the rUK from Scottish and Norwiegen waters. This would be a very “green” proposal for our fishing grounds and very good for the scottish fishing fleet. And the Norwiegens.

It would appeal to the No/remainers since it would ensure the free movement of people and continued unfettered access to the EU single market, an issue which will be discussed in detail during the brexit negotiations and the dangers to the economy of EU tarriff barriers highlighted and realised

What about the Yes remainers? Presently the EU (guy verhofstadt) is looking at granting EU citizenship to those in the UK who want to retain it. So this EFTA/EEA position would fulfill all of the promises made by Nicola Sturgeon in the wake of the Brexit vote, it guards your EU citizenship, allows us to keep the ECHR protections, free movement of people and goods.

We would still have to conform to EU rules, regulations and pay our dues but the biggest drawback would be that our 6 MEPs would have much less say or indeed a vote on future EU legislation. But is this such a very big compromise for very pro EU yessers to make ? Especially if it ensures a yes victory in indyref2.

As I said at the beginning of this article, the EFTA/EEA option was only a “holding pen” position for indyref2. It should be accompanied by the promise of an Euref2 in the second half of the next, and independent Holyrood session. Nicola has a mandate to enact this EU proposal and an EFTA/EEA agreement doesnt need confirmation by a vote in a referendum, The 62% who voted remain have by degrees already given her the mandate to do this. Euref2 will not require a leave option on the ballot paper for the same reasons. No, the Euref2 ballot paper only needs options for greater EU integration than the EFTA/EEA we will have by then. eg. a Swedish option, in the EU but not using the euro or full EU membership and in the Euro zone.